


Stars

by TheBookWorm01



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Jack Shepard - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-11
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-11-15 09:01:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18070418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBookWorm01/pseuds/TheBookWorm01
Summary: A brief look at Commander Jack Shepard's life and her relationship with the stars that surround her.





	Stars

**Author's Note:**

> This fic begins with Jack Shepard on Mindoir and ends with the conclusion of ME3. I also wrote it in half hour or something and is unedited so read at your own peril.

Jacquelyn Shepard loved the stars.  
When she had been angry on Mindoir she’d climb out her window to stare at them from the middle of a nowhere. Gazing into the wide expanse of blackness made her feel small and when she was small she wasn’t the sister constantly getting into fights, unsure of her place in the world, and frightened of the power she could feel threatening to burst from under her skin. She was just one dot of light among the millions floating around her. Somehow that made her feel safe.  
Then those same stars brought a ship that came to harvest them, not the crops ripening in the fields they tended. So many of those lights she loved went out that day, and hers dimmed and shrunk until it became a white dwarf, cannibalizing itself to hold on for just one more day. She had picked up a gun on Mindoir, had killed the Batarian attempting to put a collar on her. If the alliance soldiers who picked her up had not taken it from her, she would never have put it down. 

Jack Shepard missed the stars.  
The ones here were not hers. She could not even see them here, the cold metal of the base hiding them away. The lights of her old life were far away, on the opposite end of the galaxy. The ones here were pretty, beautiful even, but they were not hers. It was better that way. Easier to pretend that she was not just a scared little girl who had enlisted for all the wrong reasons. She found new fuel with the alliance, rage and bitterness so much more potent than the unfocused anger of a confused teenager. It made her work harder. She told herself she was not here to make friends but still, she made them. They hung on by their fingernails, scratching for purchase in a carefully carved wall. You needed trust when you put your life in another’s hands. One girl brought a god damn chisel, refused to let her hide away. She would never tell her how much her friendship meant. When she smiled she could see her mother and father and sister behind her eyes and it hurt so badly but she couldn’t live without it. A year later she told her how much she had hated fellow recruit, and that she overheard their COs talking about dismissing her and knew it would destroy what little light was left in her and she could not stand by and watch it fade.  
She watched the girl die. Watched as the thresher maw split their vehicle in two and hunted them down one by one until they were the only two left. The girl bled out next to her, demanding her promise that she would not let her light go out and waste all her hard work. Somehow, somehow she survived. The maw did not notice the battered soldier, beaten but not broken, force herself to live until a rescue came. 

Shepard talked to the stars.  
She named them after those she lost. The promise she made to the girl rubbed her raw, her wounds aching against the medals and titles she had been given for not dying when those around her fell. She told the girl how much she hated them, told her sister to save her a seat wherever she was, told her parents how much her new CO reminded her of them and that she wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing.  
Anderson was easy to like. But he dug and dug even as she pushed away, determined not to feel his loss when he inevitably left, to not to break down over all she had lost, to not let him burn himself trying to get close. He was as stubborn as her though and she found herself telling him everything, even the name she abandoned all those years ago.  
Her crew - her crew - did not let her hide. For once, she didn’t want to. She let them in, determined to keep her promise. It was not forgiveness for her past, for failing everyone so horribly. But it was kindness. And for once she was glad to take the blame when she lost one more person. Better that she feel the weight than them. That would be her job, then. Protect who she could and mourn those she couldn’t and do her damnedest to keep the latter a low number. She would keep the lights on until it killed her. 

Commander Shepard hid from the stars.  
They had swallowed her up, broken her bones and punctured her lungs and thrown her down down down until she was nothing more than meat and gore.  
And she had been put back together piece by piece with pieces that were not her own. Her mother had once told her she glowed but not like this, with the sickly orange and red of resurrection that she had not deserved or wanted.  
The stars had stolen her breath from her and these people put her under them without a second thought.  
She hid from them and she was not sure if it was because she was scared of returning to them or scared that she wanted to.  
This crew was her crew but not quite hers. So she made them hers. Helped with their troubles, solved what problems she could, reunited them with the people they cared for, destroyed what memories deserved to burn. The familiar faces made it easier.  
One familiar face made her understand why her parents had clung to each other in their last defiant moments, determined to stay together even unto death. She wouldn’t say it though. Her feelings were her own and how would it even work. She could keep it casual if he could. But he cared even if he wouldn’t say it either. Of all the lights on this ship, all unique and strange, his was the brightest. He had told her his own names for the stars years ago, and they gave them new names the night they thought was their last. 

Jack begged the stars.  
Begged them to let her rest, to let her people live, to let this goddamned war end. Never when anyone could hear. They couldn’t know, she wouldn’t let them. To protect them all, she had to look as indestructible as they thought she was. But she had already died once. They all knew that but somehow she was the only one who remembered it. So many lights went out. She was afraid there wouldn’t be enough stars left to name.  
They gave out new names each night, saving the best stars for those whose absence was felt the most. They picked their own, one night. Debated what felt best for themselves, finding the other’s choice too modest for what they meant to them. They decided to share one, in the end. It felt right.  
He gave her an order, and she disobeyed. It cracked her heart into a thousand pieces, a match to her body, shattered by by Harbinger and the stupid beam up to the citadel and the goddamn illusive man. She was given a choice. Not that it mattered. She could feel her life slipping through her fingers like the blood leaking from her abdomen. She couldn’t obey even if she wanted to. So she gave him the next best thing.

Commander Jack Shepard gave him the stars.


End file.
